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The provider of affordable website hosting presents - 7 Apps to Run Your SEO or PPC From Your Phone

Thanks to mobile apps it’s now easier than ever to to run your SEO, PPC, AdWords and Social Media campaigns directly from your phone. That’s definitely a big deal when you’re traveling or if in an industry that requires a lot of time out of the office.

While that makes your professional life a whole lot easier, it can be a challenge to narrow down the most useful apps. According to Statista, there were 1.3 million mobile apps in the Apple App Store alone in September, 2014. To help save you an endless amount of time scouring through Google Play or the App Store, here are seven incredible apps that you need to use for SEO, PPC, AdWords and Social Media campaigns.

Note, before using 3rd party apps, make sure things are approved with your employer (if you are in-house) or your client (if you list tools that you utilize in your agreements). 86% of apps used for business were not sanctioned in 2014, and the last thing you’ll want to do is add to that number and the amount of Shadow IT issues occurring with third party apps.

MarginWeb Website & SEO Toolbox

This free app is absolutely essentially if you own a website. It runs tests that check your social media presence, Google ranking and the amount of backlinks. It also provides suggestions on how to optimize your website, such as the proper length of titles and description. It also notifies you of any broken links and even comes equipped with keyword suggestions so that you can optimize blog posts and ad campaigns.

Serps.com

SERPs provides a powerful app for Android and iOS users that delivers daily SEO data, like ranking, link metrics and monitoring of organic traffic. It even integrates with Google Analytics so that you can discover which keywords are most effective. Other features include being able to spy on your competitor’s backlinks, local rank tracking and having the power to run test which techniques are working for your business.

You can install the SERPs.com app for free, but you’ll need a login to continue. This means that you’ll have to purchase a plan. The Starter plan begins at $999/month.

Google Analytics remains a necessity for SEO. With the Google Analytics app you’ll have real-time reports that highlight your page’s traffic, visitor information, how long people stayed on your site, which content is performing best and your AdWords campaign is performing. That’s a lot of information at your fingertips for free – there is a premium version if you need something more robust.

Google AdWords Express App (Android / iPhone)

Speaking of Google, there’s also the AdWords Express Apps that you should also download if you want to reach more customers. Through this app you’ll be able to create an ad in under 15 minutes, which will appear in Google search results, Google Maps and select partner sites. Once your ad is up and running you can then view how many calls or clicks it is generating. You can also adjust your budget accordingly. It’s a great solution for both online and offline businesses.

HubSpot

Why is HubSpot such a popular tool for marketers? Because it pretty does everything you want and need when it comes to your marketing campaign. Whether it’s scheduling social media posts/emails, monitoring what others are saying about you online, review effectiveness of marketing campaigns and connect with leads with through Contact Records. Now you have access to all of this information through the HubSpot App – available for both Android and iPhone. After your 30-day free trial, you’ll have to select a plan which starts at $200/month.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another tool that is often discussed among online marketers because it’s one of the best social media tools available. Not only can you plan Facebook posts or Tweets, you can assign tasks to team members and review analytics reports. You can also target audience by location, listen to the online conversations involving your business, locate better leads, create a social media marketing campaign and provide customer service. Hootsuite has a Free plan, but the Pro Plan starts at only $10/month.

Feedly

If you’re looking to curate potential content ideas, stay up-to-date with the latest industry news or see what your competitors are sharing, then look no further than Feedly. If you haven’t heard of Feedly, then just know that it’s a news aggregator application which allows you to select the feeds that interest you the most. It’s a free service that can run on Android and iOS devices, which means that you can keep check your feed whenever and wherever you want.

What are some of your favorite SEO / SEM mobile apps?

The post 7 Apps to Run Your SEO or PPC From Your Phone appeared first on SEO Chat.

The provider of affordable website hosting presents - Free Tools to Do A Competitor Blog Audit

Your content is one of the greatest tools you have at your disposal, from a marketing point of view. It gets your name out there, attracts attention, bring in regulars, markets your brand, builds your authority, connects you to other experts… you would be hard pressed to find a way it wouldn’t be helpful. Having a consistent, high quality blog can launch your entire career, and turn a hobby into a money making venture.

But how does it rank with the content of your competitors? Competitor blog audit involves gathering data that allows you to compare your work with someone else’s, or to get a feel for what your target audience is looking for in a successful blog. It is something that every blogger should be taking part in regularly; to make sure they are constantly evolving with the needs of their potential readers.

Step 1 – Determine Your Competition

While you may be able to get some idea of what people are reading by looking at the biggest industry blogs on a topic (such as TechCrunch or Gizmodo, for example), chances are that you are nowhere near their level of visibility. Maybe someday you will be, but for right now you should focusing on websites that are more direct competitors.

Put as few as three on this list, and as much as five. If after you have made this list you feel the need to put some big names on there, one or two could be added. Just keep in mind that these big names will be best case scenarios for the future, as a goal in mind. When comparing their data, it should be as part of a longer term strategy, with the bulk of your information coming from the direct competitors to start out with.

Helpful tool: Use BuzzSumo to find recently active and successful blogs on any topic!

Step 2 – Look At What Content They Provide

Not all blogs are all about text blog posts. Multiple media forms is just a part of an overall, well rounded content strategies on the web today. Look and see what your competitors are doing on a regular basis. Infographics? Podcasts? Videos? Slideshares? Mini clips, like Vines? Comics? Are they specializing in one or two, or have they branches out into every niche possible?

Helpful resource: Here’s an easy guide to understand blogging easier

List all content under each name, and see what sites have what media in common. You should be able to narrow down what is working and what isn’t based on who is trying what.

Step 3 – Figure Out What Is Popular In Each Media Type

It is pretty simple to get an idea of what is bringing in the most benefits for your competitors blogs. SEO ranking is part of this, but we will look at that in another step. Right now, you should be looking at their engagement.

Helpful resource: Give this tool any blog RSS feed and it will pull out recent articles and their social media numbers

Comments, social media shares, and referral traffic present a clear picture of how people are reacting to those topics, the tone of the post, and the media style. Take a collection of links to the most engaging content on those sites, and include it in your spreadsheet.

Step 4 – Start Sorting Out The Most Popular Posts In Each Category

Take the links you are finding, and start sorting them into categories by media type, topic, or style. That will give you a look at what is working most for each site. Note any patterns that begin to emerge, where the sites have data in common. If three of your five competitor blogs are getting a lot of engagement on posts that include infographics, but not a lot on audio podcast downloads, that should tell you something.

Helpful tool: Our Social Media Tool will process lots of links for you and return helpful social media stats and author details:

You can also start to compare these links to your own content, to see what it has in common (or doesn’t) with your own posts. This process is excellent for pointing out things you may have been doing wrong, or just not quite nailing down.

Step 5 – Look At Competitor’s SEO Tactics

Finally, you want to know how people are driving traffic through direct searches. That means taking a look at the keywords they are properly exploiting, and those they aren’t.

Tool: Website Crawler and XML Sitemap Generator

You may be able to find some keywords they aren’t targeting, and take advantage of those ones yourself. Or find some keywords that you should be pushing for, as pushing past their SEO rank is an easy way to start getting more traffic.

What To Do With The Data

Essentially, this is just a way to seeing what is working for others, and what isn’t. How you choose to use it is entirely up to you. You could either start to focus on the same topics and media types that they are, or you could go the alternative route and start to focus on the areas that they are lacking. Both have a chance of improving your content strategy, and so boosting the popularity of your site.

Personally, I prefer to use it more loosely. I will see what topics or content get the most mileage, but will try and find a way to incorporate that into my own interests and work. Never forget that while you are auditing your competitors to see how they are improving their own success, you don’t want to copy them. You have your own strengths, your own readers, and your own style. You want to be easy to distinguish from the rest of the crowd.

Conclusion

You should be conducting a competitor audit at least once every few months. It just lets you keep an eye on rival sites, as well as find opportunities to connect with others, or get warning when something on your own site needs to change. As you can see, the positives are endless.

Do you have any tips for conducting competitor blog audits? We would love to hear about them, so let us know in the comments!

The post Free Tools to Do A Competitor Blog Audit appeared first on SEO Chat.

The provider of affordable website hosting presents - Get Back to the Basics: How to Rank Your Article on the First Page of Google

Google’s First Page of Search Engine results is the only place worth being these days. If you don’t rank on a search engines first page you have maybe a 1-5 percent chance of being found, depending on the industry you are in.

That might seem like the competition is too hard and the whole optimization thing is a waste of time, but it’s not. The thing about Web Marketing is that it’s not really all that hard. I know, I know, people like to make it mysterious and full of incomprehensible graphs and data. But believe me, it ain’t.

There are things that almost any blogger or small business website can be doing to bring themselves up to the first page, which is why I wrote my cheeky article: “Google’s 1st Page, and How I got this Article There”.

Bit embarrassing after that title if I don’t actually make it to the top of the search engine, eh?

Here are the 5 of the 10 steps I use on each page to get me heading in the right direction. Try them on your own site if you haven’t tried them yet.

1. Domain

Your domain name should be short and sweet. It also helps if you can keep your product, post or service URL short also.

2. Title Tag

The title tag tells Google in a few words what your page is about. If you don’t tell Google, it will guess. Therefore, use your Title Tag.

3. Keywords

Every page on your site should be optimized using a major keyword or phrase. Use this keyword suggestion tool to find good option.

4. Image Attributes

Alt tags (Image Attributes) are similar to title tags and description tags. They help Google to understand your pictures. Use them on every image and make them all different. Google loves to read this stuff.

5. Outbound Links

Put yourself in Good Company. Although it may seem strange, Google is believed to act positively toward the external links that point to authoritative sites in an article. Pick your sites carefully. Use sparingly.

While ranking in Google is challenging, it is not impossible. Ranking on the first page of any search engine is all about common sense, a bit of sweat and diligence.

The key to SEO is good, relevant, and up to date content. Everything else is just infrastructure, which is to say, helping the content to be easily found and understandable by the search engines.

The beauty in all this is that the better your site’s content, the higher your rankings in Google. The higher your rankings, the better your click through rate. The better your click through rate, the more relevant your content must be. The more relevant your content, the more likely you are to make sales.

Go for it and be sure to take in all 10 of these search optimization tips and apply them to your site.

Infographic source: 1st Page of Google – How I Got this Article There

The post Get Back to the Basics: How to Rank Your Article on the First Page of Google appeared first on SEO Chat.

With mobile responsiveness becoming a major new search factor in 2015, it is important to ensure both your site and your emails are mobile responsive. The better you configure your email template to make it easy to get to your site, the more traffic it will drive.

Pages you link from your email need to be optimized for mobile devices. The more compelling the page and the easier it is to navigate from any device, the longer the time on page will be. Bounce rates can also be decreased.

Responsive Email Tips:

Put some serious thought into how you create your email template. Your most important call to action button should be easy to reach with a thumb on a SmartPhone.

Fortunately, email providers have made it easier to immediately see what changes to your template will look like on other devices. Watch the video here on how a mobile responsive email template builder works.

When designing your template, your call to action button is most important. Position it first. Decide whether your social sharing buttons are more important to you than your social network links and place them accordingly. (Ask yourself whether getting your readers to share your content more important than getting them to visit your social network account?)

How to Increase Time on Site

One of the easiest ways to increase time on site is to provide compelling videos, SlideShares or complex infographics. All of these will keep a reader engaged and on the page.

Choose your videos carefully. They need to grab the users attention immediately and keep it. The best bloggers will watch sometimes dozens of videos looking for the video that starts with a bang. If you produce your own videos, here are some tips:

Do not use a long introduction
Don’t start as a commercial for your business – your business info belongs at the end – not the beginning

If you don’t get their attention within the first few seconds you never will.

Similar tips apply to SlideShares. The best SlideShare will have a cover image that encourages interaction. Each slide should be visually appealing. Images are better than too much text. Stats compiled into colorful graphs work well.

Too often there are SlideShares with excellent information we don’t use because they aren’t easy to read or just too plain. If you want your information seen it must be attractive to your audience!

Reducing Bounce Rates

The key to keeping visitors from leaving your site after only viewing one page is to ensure they are presented with additional related content. This can be done manually within a page, but it is easier done automatically.

Major sites use various services to present images that pull visitors to additional content. I’m sure you’ve seen images and link bait headlines meant to get that next click. The more curiosity you can create the more clicks you can generate.

Depending upon the solution chosen and how they’re configured, this concept may be keeping people on a site or used to generate income by selling space to advertisers.

Sites of any size can use TrenDemon to identify their top converting content and most visited content and automatically suggest additional pages for visitors to view.

Focus on High Traffic Pages

Put more thought into what images and links you offer from your emails. Optimize the landing pages to lead visitors to your best converting pages. Identify those pages using analytics.

Even if you use an automated method of encouraging visitors to visit additional pages, consider manually optimizing your top traffic pages and your best converting pages.

Update top traffic pages to keep them fresh. Ensure they include at least one image that will grab attention on social media. Push that image out periodically to each social network.

Use the tips in How to Build More Targeted Traffic to Your Blog to push even more traffic to your already highest traffic pages.

Learn From Your Results

How long visitors stay and where they travel within your site is largely under your control. Start noticing which images get the most interaction (likes, shares, retweets, and comments) online. What do they have in common?

Study your email open rates as well as your social media interactions and online stats. All of them can teach you what to avoid and what to do more often.

Continual improvement in everything you do makes a huge difference. Don’t just throw up that content and send out an email. Learn to hone your craft or be left behind by those who do.

The post Responsive Email Tips to Improve CTR and SEO appeared first on SEO Chat.

In the B2B space, there persists a belief that social media only works for B2C. This is because to date most have no proof it works for B2B. According to MarketingProfs and The Content Marketing Institute B2B Content Marketing 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America, measurement is a key area where B2B marketers are struggling:

Only 21% say they are successful at tracking ROI.

New social media management solutions make tracking leads and identifying which social shares generate leads and conversion possible. Businesses that implement social media measurement tools have the advantage of focusing their time and resources where they get results.

Many still think social media only works for B2C not B2B. Interested in how many other B2Bs are using social media? All of the statistics below are specific to B2B and come from the above-linked 2015 research.

User data from social media management tool Oktopost agrees. Their user data indicates LinkedIn generated 80.33% of conversions, compared to 13.73% for Twitter, 6.73% for Facebook, and 0.21% for Google Plus. Further, their user data shows that B2Bs should be focusing on interacting in discussion groups because 86.30% of conversions were generated in groups versus 10.07% on company pages and 3.63% on personal profiles. Source of stats:

B2B Social Media Measurement

It is possible to measure not only which social network generates the most leads or conversions, but exactly what lead a specific piece of content generated. Once a lead is recognized, all touches with your creatives and social shares are recorded.

Drill down into exactly which post in which LinkedIn group generated a lead. Find out which groups never convert so you can focus your time on the ones that do. It is clear that LinkedIn produces the most leads and conversions. Sales teams have the additional benefit of knowing much more about each lead before contact.

Leads obtained from LinkedIn provide access to profiles which reveal major insights into their backgrounds, authority, and job descriptions. Their titles may indicate whether they are decision-makers. And you can use LinkedIn’s InMail to contact them.

It is unclear why brands are so focused on Facebook. Leads from that source often provide little information for your sales team to go on. You have to request connection which many reserve only for friends and family. Without being connected first, any message you send is likely to end up in a mailbox the user never sees.

B2B Social Media Case Studies

Still not convinced social media converts for B2B? Lee Odden of TopRankBlog compiled 12 B2B Social Media Case Studies with details on how these twelve B2Bs benefited from specific social media strategies. Here are examples of what some of these B2Bs accomplished:

SunGard generated over 3000 leads in just 3 days
Toshiba: 19,000 opens, 1,100+ clicks and generated 309 leads
LivePerson: 800 downloads, 11% open rate with a 17% click-through-rate (CTR), generated 270 marketing qualified leads and cited as “the most successful e-book of 2013”
LinkedIn: 10,000 downloads in less than 30 days, more than one-third by marketing qualified leads

Impressive conversion rates like these are attainable by using social media management tools that include the ability to measure results. Case studies provide ideas for what to test and what kind of results other B2Bs have been able to achieve.

The post B2B Social Media Measurement Proves ROI appeared first on SEO Chat.

I am sure a lot of our readers and members provide some sorts of online marketing services and thus they are facing with the well-known dilemma: How to measure and charge for the service? How to make your pricing competitive and clear while not under-pricing yourself.

[There's also a follow up to this article on how to manage your own time more effectively]

With these questions we came to some of companies:

David Leonhardt from THGM Writing Services

Follow @amabaie

“…estimate how much effort is involved and charge by the project”

First, let us draw a distinction between time-management and client billing.

For time management, that being my own work and work for clients combined, as well as any personal/family/household chores to get done, I work from a to-do list. I try to get the most important things done first, then I usually panic because the list is not shrinking very fast, so I turn my attention to quick things that I can tick off… then, being able to breathe more easily, I turn my attention to whatever is most important among what is left.

When it comes to client work, I estimate how much effort is involved and charge by the project. I really don’t want to watch the clock, and a lot of client work cannot be done in a single block of time, but rather needs to be interspersed with other work.

Tat Apostolova from Mum in search

Follow @muminsearch

“Charging for tasks keeps me motivated”

Back in the corporate world, when I was working in a job that paid for time spent in the office, I always felt undervalued. I’m a hard worker and I loved my job, so I was putting my heart into it when other people around me would just do the bare minimum and get paid a similar wage.

It just didn’t seem fair. I was a lot happier when I switched to a commission based job (in fact, this is exactly the reason I switched to a commission based job – I wanted to be paid fairly for my effort). Now that I’m running my own business from home, I charge for tasks. It keeps me motivated to work more productively.

Ashley Faulkes from Mad Lemmings

Follow @madlemmingz

The future of work is task based

When pricing and measuring my work I try, or am still trying, to bring the cost of a service to task based. Basing your work and ultimately your value on a commodity is old fashioned and not useful. And after seeing many a worker waste time in the office and still get paid, I am sure is a pointless system.

One of the biggest issues with this idea is that people still see many services as commodities. So it is hard to sell, for instance, a website when there are so many competitors undercutting your services. Even if you are delivering a better product. So you have to sell your service based on a result, rather than on a service which can be evaluated on the number of hours you work.

One way to do this is to add things others cannot offer in the same service. Even if these things are not time intensive. That is where in my area marketing combined with web design comes together. Most people cannot do both well. Most web designers barely know SEO and cannot write at all. So by offering customers expertise that is not a commodity, you are able to sell a value based package.

I am not saying it is simple to achieve, but it is the future and we should all work towards it. Otherwise, we are doomed to work 9-5, only perhaps at home instead of in an office!

Andrew Isidoro

Follow @Andrew_Isidoro

Task based + Pomodoro

I’m a big fan of task based tracking. Not only does it focus you on getting one thing completed but it also puts halt to the temptation to multitask which has been proved to reduce productivity. I’ve used task based tracking for a while now for my freelance business and I’ve found that it works particularly well with the Pomodoro technique to keep you focused and productive.

What are your tips for measuring your work and charging for it? Please share below!

The post Online Marketing Services: Why You Should Consider Charging by Task appeared first on SEO Chat.

A new year is a good time to try something new (especially given that Q1 is usually a slower quieter time for many marketers!) Is there any tactic you are planning to try this year?

Here’s some inspiration for you!

Jolynno: Video Marketing + Podcasting

Yes, I currently use Instagram marketing and Facebook primarily. I plan to use video marketing in 2015 paired with podcasting. I think these 2 mediums are gaining in popularity and offer a more personal way to connect to my audience.

As for podcasting, I want to offer my blog posts as podcast sessions and see how I can then grow that to a regular podcast broadcast. Video marketing is an affordable and easy way to build rapport and share information and tips. I have only done a few videos in 2014 but want to expand upon this in 2015. I also plan to have several webinars as well so I can have a more immediate connection with my audience. This will also help me to grow my email list which is big goal for me next year.

Steve Counsell: Maximize Personal Branding

For a while I have been bouncing back and forth between a company based brand and a personal brand. In 2015 I will start to maximize on my personal brand but moving all of my efforts into my personal website and writing an ebook on DIY SEO.

To get started I have committed to blog every day through January and to finalise the first draft of my ebook in the next few days.

Creating a buzz around a brand has been a challenge but I feel that by pushing content out there and publishing it on social media and links building I’ll succeed in my goal of launching “Me” as a brand for online promotion.

I’ve watched other do the same, people like Brian Gardner and Ryan Deiss seem to be very good at pushing their own brand through CopyBlogger and DigitalMarketer.

I aspire to be like these guys – eventually…

Cormac84: “Skyscraper Technique”

I’ve already made the decision to create a lot more content for my site in 2015 and this led me to think what’s the best way to create long form content that will work well for me. So, after some thinking and some research I decided that Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique is one that works well and will help me achieve a lot of my goals.

It’s quite simple, just find a great piece of content on someone else’s blog and make a far better one again. Follow this up by reaching out to those already linking to the good piece, informing them about the existence of your even better piece.

For me it means long form content, more on-site blogging and hopefully more great links.

Jared Banz: More Focused Content Marketing + MyBlogU

I am not trying any new tactics per se for 2015, but I do plan to bring them together better. Content marketing was huge for 2014, and I think it will continue to be important in 2015. I plan to have a focused approach in my content marketing efforts as I know the competition will be fierce.

What do I mean for a “focused approach”?

I plan thoroughly research local SEO and interview other professionals through MyBlogU. Once I have researched the topic at length, I will likely write an e-book, which will likely be a revised version of multiple blog posts that I write. I also plan to explore new venues (for me) like SlideShare and YouTube to leverage the content I have already produced. Finally, I plan to offer professional services for local SEO, which I believe to be a hot item in the coming year.

I believe that this is a great approach because it involves other professionals and it helps me to become a master of a relevant topic. This past year, I utilized MyBlogU for one interview, and I was shocked by the amount of quality traffic that I received via social media to my blog post. I’m hoping to build on a great experience with MyBlogU, while also adding more opportunities for my business to grow.

Paul Manwaring: Video Marketing

For me it’s trying to create more engaging content through video marketing. I’ve seen an increase in bloggers venturing out into video such as Patt Flynn and Shane Melaugh. I personally enjoy watching a video post as opposed to reading an article.

I set myself a goal of producing 1 video post per week for my blog. Sometimes it will be a guide, other times it might just be a video version of an article I write. The idea is to give my readers the option of either watching or reading my content.

I have invested approx £1000 in studio equipment, it may seem like a lot but I want to produce very high quality videos as presentation is everything and no one wants to read an article on an ugly, poorly designed website, so I take the same viewpoint to my videos. It’s also partly my hobby being a designer and I really enjoy setting up the studio in my flat and recording and editing the videos. The equipment will last me for years so I’m not worried about the initial outlay, as I know it will pay off eventually.

Ashley Faulkes: “Commitment” Marketing

There is a great marketing tactic that I have been meaning to try and 2015 is the year for it! It is based on a psychological principal called “commitment” (which I am currently reading about in a book called Influence – I recommend you read it). The idea is this, by getting a customer to buy something from you, anything really, even something really small, they have made a commitment to a relationship with you.

Sounds simple and maybe even worthless, but the results can be amazing. By getting someone to commit to something, their psychology changes and they behave in a way that makes them live up to this commitment. The result is that they are far more likely to buy from you in the future, even a lot more expensive things. All sorts of companies do this on a daily basis.

I first saw this in action on SuperFastBusiness.com, a marketing site that I follow and podcast I listen to. The owner James Shramko is super experienced in sales and marketing and has loads of ideas to learn from. This was one of them. He sells a cheap SEO website check, a small commitment, and all the rest of his services are usually 10x more at least. He is running a 7 figure business that is constantly growing, so I am sure this works.

So this tactic is being rolled out on my websites in 2015. Let’s see how it goes!

Jeffrey Romano: Visual Content

One tactic that I’m planning to implement in 2015 is upgrading the quality of the visual content on my blog. Instead of using normal stock photography, I’m planning on creating blog post covers and I’d like to generally be more creative with the photos I have available. I believe this will add to the quality of the posts plus it will help when I share my posts on social mediHaving nice visuals to accompany posts when sharing on Pinterest, Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter helps to increase the CTR when sharing. Furthermore, it would help the credibility of my brand and help differentiate my blog from others in the Internet Marketing/WordPress space.

Two bloggers that have inspired me to improve my visuals are Regina from byregina.com and Andrea Beltrami from www.thebrandedsolopreneur.com. Both of them have great blog post covers which helps their posts stand out when shared. Particularly on Pinterest. Both bloggers also try to include many images in their blog in order to introduce variety in their content and keep readers engaged.

I hope the above answer is satisfactory Ann. If you have any other questions about this, please feel free to get back to me.

KenS: Short Fcebook-Friendly Videos

I’ve noticed a lot of mini-videos are appearing on Facebook these days. We have a pretty good FB following, but like most they tend to hang out on FB and not jump over to the site. Sooo… we are going to try a few of those short videos to get people to visit our site and blog. For example, I am going to put up a blog post about candy and cereal and to promote it I am creating a short video about my kids eating a bowl of candy (just like cereal). The hope is that the short video will push people to click on the link and see what else there it.

What new marketing tactic are you going to try this year?

Are you planning to try any new tactic (may be new to you, not overall new) to promote your site or your brand in 2015? Please share! Please share some example of who you were inspired / who you saw do it right!

The post New Marketing Tactics to Try in 2015: What’s Yours? appeared first on SEO Chat.

No matter what type of site you have, you can learn to improve your on page SEO and your incoming links. Whether you can configure the meta fields easily depends on what your site is built on.

Website Builder SEO

If you used a website builder, it may or may not have some accessible SEO meta fields. For example, IM Creator provides the ability to create meta title, description and keywords for the entire site – but not for individual pages.

Other website builders may not provide any meta fields at all. Ideally, it is best to be able to set different meta fields for each page on a site. If your site doesn’t support meta fields, focus on optimizing your on page SEO and building incoming links.

WordPress SEO

Sites built on WordPress have many more options. Originally, WordPress users installed SEO plugins. The most popular are:

All-in-One-SEO
Platinum SEO
SEO by Yoast

Today, advanced WordPress theme platforms including Thesis and Genesis have SEO fields built in. They are customizable for each page and post individually.

Some WP users install an advanced SEO plugin even if their theme has SEO fields in order to take advantage of additional features. For example, Yoast rates how well your page or post is optimized and also supports Twitter cards to pull your images into Twitter whenever one of your posts gets tweeted.

Ecommerce SEO

If you expect your ecommerce store to show up in searches, having and using the SEO fields is essential. Major ecommerce platforms typically provide meta fields for product and category pages, but many of their users haven’t bothered to fill them out.

The Google Panda update seriously penalized ecommerce sites that did not have enough text in their descriptions and on their category pages. If you haven’t filled in these fields and optimized all of your pages for SEO you should.

You also need to find a way to increase incoming links to your pages. Many ecommerce sites fail to rank because they haven’t attracted sufficient incoming links. Some used article marketing heavily for this and were later penalized by the Penguin update and had to remove those links.

Find out more by reading Improve Google Indexing on Your Ecommerce Website.

Image Size, Page Load Time and Caching

Many site owners make the serious mistake of using high resolution images or just images that are so large they take a long time to load. Keep in mind that not all internet users have high speed access or new computers with tons of memory.

Online images don’t need to be any higher than 72 dpi. Except for complex infographics you should be able to keep them under 160 kb and under 60 kb would be even better.

WordPress users can Enable Gzip Encoding and Caching to speed up their sites. All site owners should work to reduce page load time as much as possible. Discussions in the forum suggest that under 10 seconds is essential and ideally average page load times of under 3 seconds would be better.

The Google Page Speed Score add-on for FireFox can assist you in analyzing how your pages are loading.

Google Webmaster Accounts

Creating a webmaster account on Google and Bing are recommended to make your site easier for them to index. Google Webmaster Tools has an SEO FAQ to answer many common questions.

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